As a child, were your favorite literary characters of the same gender as you?

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@Triskadecamus

I mostly liked male protagonists, but most of the protagonists I read about were male. Among females, I kinda had the hots for Clarissa Kinneson, and her daughters. I found the male Kinnesons a bit hard to take. (Of course I liked Nadrek and Worsel the best of the Lensmen, and I don’t think Nadrek had a sex, and with a thirty foot long flying lizard, the question is unlikely to come up.)

I didn’t discover the lensmen until my teen years, and I sure had vivid imaginings of Clarissa!

I always sort of liked Cynthia best, though.

[NJ_Kef_1]

I’m male. When I think back (waaaay back) to pre-teen childhood, the first books that come to mind have female protagonists.

Trot, who gets turned into a mermaid in Baum’s *The Sea Fairies *.
Meg, from Wrinkle in Time.
Harriet the Spy.

Books with male protagonists that I loved were Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet series, the Danny Dunn series, Tom Swift Junior.

Although I did not identify with any of these characters, I wanted adventures like theirs. Stories that I did somewhat identify with were those with siblings, usually two brothers and two sisters, such as the Narnia books, Edward Eager’s novels (*http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4662726]Half-Magic , The Time Garden, etc.), and E. Nesbit’s novels (http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/nesbit/fivechil.html]Five Children and It *, *http://classicreader.com/booktoc.php/sid.3/bookid.422/]The Phoenix and the Carpet *, etc.), because my brother, two sisters, and I played together.